The Insidious Bicep Conspiracy
by Daystar Searcher
Summary: Wheeler has a very...frustrating...Valentine's Day.


**Disclaimer: I claim no credit. I make no money. I just write.**

**A.N. Look, I don't want to get confrontational about this or anything, but as far as I'm concerned, Wheeler is bi, mmkay? She had a male fiancé (although who knows what' s up with that now—OH WAIT, *WE* WOULD IF WE WOULD IF WE HAD THE EIGHTH SEASON YET) and if you don't think she was flirting with that female mechanic in her first episode, then I'm sorry, but your UST radar needs a tune-up like I need Dana Scully to raise her eyebrow at me. And believe me, I *need* Dana Scully to raise her eyebrow at me.**

**Also, I don't know how they plan to deal with Julianne Nicholson's baby. I'm just assuming they'll have it be Wheeler's fiance's. **

Megan Wheeler jabbed her pencil into the paper with unwarranted viciousness, careful not to let her eyes stray past the edges of her newly solitary desk.

It had to be a conspiracy. That was all there was to it.

A conspiracy of biceps.

An evil, insidious, bicep conspiracy.

Wheeler swore.

xxxxx

It had started that morning, with the paperwork.

Paperwork. It figured that it would be at the center of a nefarious plot.

Wheeler had always hated paperwork, but back when she'd actually had a partner, she'd only had to hate half of it. Well, if she was being honest, this was Logan she was talking about it, so more like she'd only had to hate two thirds of it.

In any case, the information regarding the accomplice's vehicle could've used some clarification, so she headed down to the garage. The cheerful, pint-size young woman Wheeler'd privately nicknamed Rosa the Riveter was there, chattering away on her cellphone to her girlfriend with affectionate exasperation: "Sweetie, it's simple, you just—"

She caught sight of Wheeler and made a 'just a second, be right with you' gesture, and then smiled and rolled her eyes at some freshly uttered adorable idiocy on her girlfriend's behalf, "_No,_ honey, you put the filter in first and _then_ the coffee beans—"

Wheeler didn't recall much of the rest of the conversation, because it was at that moment that she realized how very, very nicely Rosa's biceps were stretching against the short sleeves of the mechanic's jumpsuit. Hard and toned and cinnamon brown and slick with sweat and splashes of black grease and motor oil. Lit with the glow from the harsh garage lights till they gleamed, till they whispered a succulent siren song, till Wheeler's mouth was practically watering—

Rosa snapped the cell shut. "What can I do for you, Detective?"

_Well, you could flex that muscle right there again—oh. Right. _

xxxxx

Also, it was Valentine's Day.

Wheeler normally had nothing against Valentine's Day. But as of this particular Valentine's Day she was a newly unattached bisexual, and there was something about being bi and single that made you feel like you were failing twice as much as everybody else, even if you knew intellectually that that wasn't true.

In college Megan had dated a boy who, with the best intentions, had given her for a birthday present a T-shirt which read _Being Bi Automatically Doubles Your Chances for a Date on Saturday Night. _And Megan had smiled, looked deep into his eyes, and said:

"Actually, that would only be mathematically correct if everyone else in the world were already bi. As it is, with the most generous statistics you only get an increase of fourteen percent."

Stabbing her pencil into the form, Wheeler conceded that this response was probably why she spent so much time being an unattached bisexual in the first place.

xxxxx

Her next stop in The Great Paperwork Sorting-Out was with Ira. Another case had involved some sort of online community that Ira was sure to know a great deal about, and just as certainly be able to hack into. Truth be told, she probably could've done that on her own, but Ira was always fun to talk to and geek out with.

And he was also reliably, steadfastly unsexy. Just what she needed right now to gain perspective after the Rosa Incident.

Except, of course, that this was a conspiracy, and when she arrived at his private little corner she found him engaged in some sort of puzzle with Simmons, the sweetly overenthusiastic forensic accountant and fellow nerdy fanboy. Something about missing funds and wire transfers and virtual economies and they were both pacing rapidly around the room tossing out theories, eyes flashing and words shooting forth, loud voices and shaking heads and waving hands. And in the excitement of getting down to the nitty-gritty details they had apparently both rolled up their sleeves, which was of course perfectly normal even if they did have surprising muscular upper arms and oh God why was she suddenly picturing them shirtless and making out? And why did she suddenly have the _Avenue Q _song "Fine, Fine Line" stuck in her head? Especially when "If You Were Gay" was so much more thematically appropriate?

xxxxx

Of course, the annoyance of being an unattached bisexual on Valentine's Day was compounded by the knowledge that, if sheer amount of pleading phone calls could be entered as evidence, one person did not regard her as unattached at all. And Wheeler couldn't help but feel irritated that despite her ambiguous feelings about her (possibly former) fiancé, whom she might or might not still be in love with, and might or might not want to push down a well so deep Lassie couldn't save him with a month-long head start…despite all that, she couldn't quite drown out the little voice saying, _Well, they do allow conjugal visits, you know… _

Oh yes, and that would just go over swell. She could hear the conversation now: _Well, no, Colin, I haven't decided yet whether to believe you/forgive you/cut your balls off with a rusty paring knife. It's just that there's this ridiculous amount of sexual tension at work lately, so I was wondering…_

Yeah, that'd go down like a spoonful of sugar and peachy keen delicousness.

And while she was bitching, she decided, she might as well castigate one of the main reasons her body was pulling such a full-on assault on her brain with a Molotov cocktail of hormones. She ran her hand over her stomach, trying to see if the bump had begun to show. The morning sickness already had.

Yes, if there was one thing that sucked even more than being a bisexual of uncertain attachment status on Valentine's Day in an office full of incredibly attractive people generating ungodly amounts of sexual tension, then it was being all those things—and pregnant.

xxxxx

It was at this point that Wheeler was pretty sure the hormones completely fried her brain, destroying what little higher-order processing skills she had left, because where did she decide to go to clear up some autopsy details and escape the suffocatingly high levels of sexual tension?

The morgue. The freaking _morgue._

Which, these days, was pretty much Danny Ross' second home. Pretty much because it had always been Liz Rodgers' first.

Which meant that Wheeler, a detective and trained observer, had to _not _observe certain things.

Like the crash that she just knew was two people knocking over a tray of surgical instruments when she rapped on the door, and like how when they let her in Rodgers had the first three buttons of her blouse undone, and Ross was shifting back from foot to foot, his hair even wilder than usual, and both of them were breathing like they'd just run a marathon, and their sleeves were rumpled and clinging and pushed back just far to reveal tantalizing glimpses of sweaty smooth skin over taut muscle—

Oh yeah. Not observing that at _all._

xxxxx

And if her brain hadn't been fried before, it definitely was after that, because what was her next decision? To go to her desk to finish up the paperwork. Her lonely, lonely desk that, now unobstructed by Logan's cocky grin and waggling eyebrows—and it was preposterous how she actually missed his goddamn _eyebrows,_ for heaven's sake--featured a perfect view of Goren and Eames. Or as she liked to mentally call them: Oh My God If I Wasn't Bisexual Before I Would Be Now Take Me Take Me Take Me. Which was admittedly less of a nickname than a plea, or possibly an orgasm.

Megan Wheeler was, of course, physically and morally repulsed by the idea of a threesome. A threesome was a tawdry and unsafe undertaking, concerned with nothing more than cheap thrills and release, bereft of any of the deeper meaning that sex could offer, a false and meaningless high that would only leave its participants feeling empty and used and worthless—

And it was so, so unfair that Goren and Eames had never invited her to one.

Of course, in order to have a threesome it was probably necessary to have an established twosome. Which, as far as Wheeler could tell, Goren and Eames weren't. Which was also, come to think of it, horribly unfair. After all, if you were going to be that ridiculously attractive, and work in such close physical proximity to each other for such an extended period of time—well, if you were going to do that then you practically had a responsibility to get it on, an _imperative_, a moral duty—

Strictly for the mental health of your co-workers, of course.

Otherwise, you were just rubbing your exceedingly passionate celibacy in everyone's faces. And that was just cruel.

And of course it had all just been getting worse since the Declan Gage fiasco. Goren kept making big old _I've been terribly traumatized _puppy dog eyes across his desk at Eames, and Eames had started giving him these little touches, little supportive shoulder clasps and hand squeezes and neck massages and arm punches, and it was all enough to make a girl whip out her gun and demand that they just freaking have sex already!

Which was probably not the greatest career move.

So Wheeler did her best to keep her eyes fixed firmly on the stack of papers before her. Good old boring paperwork. It would save her. Just focus on the paperwork, and try not to remember how it got you into this mess in the first place. God, the room was hot. Did someone turn up the thermostat? Wheeler glanced up to look at the thermostat, already rehearsing exactly how she would tear apart Jeffries—it was always Jeffries—for adjusting it yet again without consulting anyone else and _OH MY GOD THAT'S CHEATING SHE CAN'T _DO_ THAT—_

Apparently Eames also found the squad room to be too hot. Apparently, because she was taking off her jacket, sliding it from her lithe little frame to reveal a completely professional red tank top that nevertheless clung to all the right places and revealed slender sinewy arms that made her look like a warrior goddess or at the very least an Amazon queen or—

_Mmmmmmm. Mmmm mmm mmm! Nom nom freaking nom. Okay, I'm officially a total creeper. And in other news, every time that woman wears a turtleneck it should be declared a day of national mourning._

And as Eames stretched—_OH MY GOD—_popping her neck and twisting her muscles in a way that made Wheeler squirm in her seat—Goren took off his jacket too.

It shouldn't be possible to have biceps almost as smoking as Eames'. But Goren had never been all that invested in the possible.

_Oh. My. God. 'Kay, while we're signing things into law, it is now officially illegal for Detective Robert Goren to EVER wear an upper body covering that is NOT a tight black T-shirt EVER again. _

And since they weren't torturing her enough already, Eames rested her elbows on the desk and her face in her hands, and leaned forward, and Bobby mirrored her, and the motion did all sorts of really fascinating things to their arm muscles plus they were making eye contact like crazy and oh incidentally they were only a few inches away from skin touching really hot skin—

Wheeler slumped over her paperwork, burying her face in the fine print, and wished with all her heart for the day to be over.

xxxxx

It had to be a conspiracy. That was all there was to it.

A conspiracy of biceps.

An evil, insidious, bicep conspiracy.


End file.
